February
It’s surprising how quick things start to move
once the tubers wake up & how space is used up. My propagator is just
about full & I've started to pot up some of the basket varieties. When
the first pot is a 5 litre you soon realise the room required to move
things on. These large sized tubers will be used 1 per basket or a large
pot, so we can see already they will need to be planted up in their
baskets or final pot in about 4/5 weeks time. Having thought about
producing a show basket I’ve already realised that they will need to be
planted up fairly early. Most of my cutting basket varieties are started
in a 1 litre pot which I had originally thought of using 5 pots per
basket. By using 5 pots would give me a North, South, East, West & one
in the middle an all over flowering basket. First headache the basket
would need to be 2 foot diameter, much to big to transport. Even 4 x 1
litre pots in an 18 inch basket is very tight so we may have to go down
to 3 in a 16 inch basket.
As most realise most of my growing is aimed
at the cut blooms classes. Anybody wishing to get into cut bloom
exhibition must first ensure that they have the correct varieties &
stock.
When I say stock you need to understand what you
are growing over the years I’ve seen bad stock of Sweet Dreams, Powder
Puff & Falstaff. I base much of the blooms I use on tried & tested
varieties that have stood the test of time of these I may grow 6/8 of
what I call my Bankers. The bankers for me are as follows Sweet Dreams,
Powder Puff, Falstaff, Bali-Hi, Tigger, Tom Brownlee, Moira Callan,
Burnout & Joyce Champion. So you can soon see that takes care of 60 odd
blooms nearly half of what I start with for each show. Some varieties
lend themselves to producing better blooms from early cuttings, Symestar
is one that I can’t get a bloom out of a tuber unless it’s a very small
cutting tuber, but I prefer growing from cuttings of this one it then
becomes a banker. A few other growers are convinced that the cutting
method produces less faults in the blooms. Another variety Tom Brownlee
I struggle to get a good number of older tuber through the winter, again
the cutting method works well & you can actually flower this on the
second bud. Any variety that I intend to use for early cuttings are
started in plain peat no fertiliser, I use Bord Mona medium course peat.
I used to have a problems with early cuttings rotting but since changing
to plain peat I have no problems, I felt that the fertiliser in a
potting mix caused the cutting to be soft. Well I have already taken the
first early cuttings & have them straight into a 1 litre square pot.now
that we are drawing towards the end of Febuary my back up tubers for the
National are now out of the garage onto the open bench, space is running
out already.
Any questions??? Ask through the new Members
Face Book page & I’ll give you an answer, or I’m sure someone will
hopefully looking forward to any discussion.
Phil Champion
